AIA Lecture: Jeremy McInerney, "Centaurs and the Uses of Hybridity"

The Archaeological Institute of America Columbus Society presents Jeremy McInerney, "Centaurs and the Uses of Hybridity"

Centaurs had a variety of meanings in the imagination of the Greeks. Sometimes they stood for unbridled male sexuality. Other centaurs almost parody the sympotic culture of the élite. Freud’s notion of the uncanny (Unheimlich) suggests that centaurs are not monstrous aliens, but uncannily familiar. They demonstrate how hybridity is a powerful tool for the Greeks to think with; that which is alien can be classified among the hybrids, shaping the experience of the uncanny into narratives of conflict and (Greek) triumph.